Articles | Volume 15, issue 21
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-12397-2015
© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-12397-2015
© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Research article
| 
09 Nov 2015
Research article |
| 09 Nov 2015
Putting the clouds back in aerosol–cloud interactions
National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1850 Table Mesa Dr., Boulder, CO 80305, USA
Related authors
Ci Song, Daniel T. McCoy, Isabel L. McCoy, Hunter Brown, Andrew Gettelman, Trude Eidhammer, and Donifan Barahona
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2009, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2009, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP).
Short summary
Short summary
This study examines how aerosols from human activities alter cloud microphysical properties. Airborne observations from a field campaign are used to constrain an ensemble of global model configurations and their associated cloud property changes. Results show that airborne in-situ measurements of aerosol and cloud properties do provide insight into global changes in cloud microphysics but are sensitive to uncertainties in both airborne measurements and Earth system model emulators.
Naser Mahfouz, Hassan Beydoun, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Noel Keen, Adam C. Varble, Luca Bertagna, Peter Bogenschutz, Andrew Bradley, Matthew W. Christensen, T. Conrad Clevenger, Aaron Donahue, Jerome Fast, James Foucar, Jean-Christophe Golaz, Oksana Guba, Walter Hannah, Benjamin Hillman, Robert Jacob, Wuyin Lin, Po-Lun Ma, Yun Qian, Balwinder Singh, Christopher Terai, Hailong Wang, Mingxuan Wu, Kai Zhang, Andrew Gettelman, Mark Taylor, L. Ruby Leung, Peter Caldwell, and Susannah Burrows
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1868, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1868, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Our study assesses the aerosol effective radiative forcing in a global cloud-resolving atmosphere model at ultra-high resolution. We demonstrate that global ERFaer signal can be robustly reproduced across resolutions when aerosol activation processes are carefully parameterized. Further, we argue that simplified prescribed aerosol schemes will open the door for further process/mechanism studies under controlled conditions.
August Mikkelsen, Daniel T. McCoy, Trude Eidhammer, Andrew Gettelman, Ci Song, Hamish Gordon, and Isabel L. McCoy
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 4547–4570, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4547-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4547-2025, 2025
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Whether increased aerosol increases or decreases liquid cloud mass has been a longstanding question. Observed correlations suggest that aerosols thin liquid cloud, but we are able to show that observations were consistent with an increase in liquid cloud in response to aerosols by leveraging a model where causality could be traced.
Weiyu Zhang, Kwinten Van Weverberg, Cyril J. Morcrette, Wuhu Feng, Kalli Furtado, Paul R. Field, Chih-Chieh Chen, Andrew Gettelman, Piers M. Forster, Daniel R. Marsh, and Alexandru Rap
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 473–489, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-473-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-473-2025, 2025
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Contrail cirrus is the largest, but also most uncertain, contribution of aviation to global warming. We evaluate, for the first time, the impact of the host climate model on contrail cirrus properties. Substantial differences exist between contrail cirrus formation, persistence, and radiative effects in the host climate models. Reliable contrail cirrus simulations require advanced representation of cloud optical properties and microphysics, which should be better constrained by observations.
Johannes Mülmenstädt, Andrew S. Ackerman, Ann M. Fridlind, Meng Huang, Po-Lun Ma, Naser Mahfouz, Susanne E. Bauer, Susannah M. Burrows, Matthew W. Christensen, Sudhakar Dipu, Andrew Gettelman, L. Ruby Leung, Florian Tornow, Johannes Quaas, Adam C. Varble, Hailong Wang, Kai Zhang, and Youtong Zheng
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 13633–13652, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13633-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13633-2024, 2024
Short summary
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Stratocumulus clouds play a large role in Earth's climate by reflecting incoming solar energy back to space. Turbulence at stratocumulus cloud top mixes in dry, warm air, which can lead to cloud dissipation. This process is challenging for coarse-resolution global models to represent. We show that global models nevertheless agree well with our process understanding. Global models also think the process is less important for the climate than other lines of evidence have led us to conclude.
Andrew Gettelman, Richard Forbes, Roger Marchand, Chih-Chieh Chen, and Mark Fielding
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8069–8092, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8069-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8069-2024, 2024
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Supercooled liquid clouds (liquid clouds colder than 0°C) are common at higher latitudes (especially over the Southern Ocean) and are critical for constraining climate projections. We compare a single-column version of a weather model to observations with two different cloud schemes and find that both the dynamical environment and atmospheric aerosols are important for reproducing observations.
Trude Eidhammer, Andrew Gettelman, Katherine Thayer-Calder, Duncan Watson-Parris, Gregory Elsaesser, Hugh Morrison, Marcus van Lier-Walqui, Ci Song, and Daniel McCoy
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 7835–7853, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-7835-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-7835-2024, 2024
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We describe a dataset where 45 parameters related to cloud processes in the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2) Community Atmosphere Model version 6 (CAM6) are perturbed. Three sets of perturbed parameter ensembles (263 members) were created: current climate, preindustrial aerosol loading and future climate with sea surface temperature increased by 4 K.
Johannes Mülmenstädt, Edward Gryspeerdt, Sudhakar Dipu, Johannes Quaas, Andrew S. Ackerman, Ann M. Fridlind, Florian Tornow, Susanne E. Bauer, Andrew Gettelman, Yi Ming, Youtong Zheng, Po-Lun Ma, Hailong Wang, Kai Zhang, Matthew W. Christensen, Adam C. Varble, L. Ruby Leung, Xiaohong Liu, David Neubauer, Daniel G. Partridge, Philip Stier, and Toshihiko Takemura
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 7331–7345, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-7331-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-7331-2024, 2024
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Human activities release copious amounts of small particles called aerosols into the atmosphere. These particles change how much sunlight clouds reflect to space, an important human perturbation of the climate, whose magnitude is highly uncertain. We found that the latest climate models show a negative correlation but a positive causal relationship between aerosols and cloud water. This means we need to be very careful when we interpret observational studies that can only see correlation.
Piers M. Forster, Chris Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Bradley Hall, Mathias Hauser, Aurélien Ribes, Debbie Rosen, Nathan P. Gillett, Matthew D. Palmer, Joeri Rogelj, Karina von Schuckmann, Blair Trewin, Myles Allen, Robbie Andrew, Richard A. Betts, Alex Borger, Tim Boyer, Jiddu A. Broersma, Carlo Buontempo, Samantha Burgess, Chiara Cagnazzo, Lijing Cheng, Pierre Friedlingstein, Andrew Gettelman, Johannes Gütschow, Masayoshi Ishii, Stuart Jenkins, Xin Lan, Colin Morice, Jens Mühle, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel E. Killick, Paul B. Krummel, Jan C. Minx, Gunnar Myhre, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Sophie Szopa, Peter Thorne, Mahesh V. M. Kovilakam, Elisa Majamäki, Jukka-Pekka Jalkanen, Margreet van Marle, Rachel M. Hoesly, Robert Rohde, Dominik Schumacher, Guido van der Werf, Russell Vose, Kirsten Zickfeld, Xuebin Zhang, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 2625–2658, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2625-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2625-2024, 2024
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This paper tracks some key indicators of global warming through time, from 1850 through to the end of 2023. It is designed to give an authoritative estimate of global warming to date and its causes. We find that in 2023, global warming reached 1.3 °C and is increasing at over 0.2 °C per decade. This is caused by all-time-high greenhouse gas emissions.
Andrew Gettelman
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 4937–4956, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-4937-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-4937-2023, 2023
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A representation of rainbows is developed for a climate model. The diagnostic raises many common issues. Simulated rainbows are evaluated against limited observations. The pattern of rainbows in the model matches observations and theory about when and where rainbows are most common. The diagnostic is used to assess the past and future state of rainbows. Changes to clouds from climate change are expected to increase rainbows as cloud cover decreases in a warmer world.
Koichi Sakaguchi, L. Ruby Leung, Colin M. Zarzycki, Jihyeon Jang, Seth McGinnis, Bryce E. Harrop, William C. Skamarock, Andrew Gettelman, Chun Zhao, William J. Gutowski, Stephen Leak, and Linda Mearns
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 3029–3081, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-3029-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-3029-2023, 2023
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We document details of the regional climate downscaling dataset produced by a global variable-resolution model. The experiment is unique in that it follows a standard protocol designed for coordinated experiments of regional models. We found negligible influence of post-processing on statistical analysis, importance of simulation quality outside of the target region, and computational challenges that our model code faced due to rapidly changing super computer systems.
Andrew Gettelman, Hugh Morrison, Trude Eidhammer, Katherine Thayer-Calder, Jian Sun, Richard Forbes, Zachary McGraw, Jiang Zhu, Trude Storelvmo, and John Dennis
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 1735–1754, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-1735-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-1735-2023, 2023
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Clouds are a critical part of weather and climate prediction. In this work, we document updates and corrections to the description of clouds used in several Earth system models. These updates include the ability to run the scheme on graphics processing units (GPUs), changes to the numerical description of precipitation, and a correction to the ice number. There are big improvements in the computational performance that can be achieved with GPU acceleration.
Xingying Huang, Andrew Gettelman, William C. Skamarock, Peter Hjort Lauritzen, Miles Curry, Adam Herrington, John T. Truesdale, and Michael Duda
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 8135–8151, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-8135-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-8135-2022, 2022
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We focus on the recent development of a state-of-the-art storm-resolving global climate model and investigate how this next-generation model performs for precipitation prediction over the western USA. Results show realistic representations of precipitation with significantly enhanced snowpack over complex terrains. The model evaluation advances the unified modeling of large-scale forcing constraints and realistic fine-scale features to advance multi-scale climate predictions and changes.
Po-Lun Ma, Bryce E. Harrop, Vincent E. Larson, Richard B. Neale, Andrew Gettelman, Hugh Morrison, Hailong Wang, Kai Zhang, Stephen A. Klein, Mark D. Zelinka, Yuying Zhang, Yun Qian, Jin-Ho Yoon, Christopher R. Jones, Meng Huang, Sheng-Lun Tai, Balwinder Singh, Peter A. Bogenschutz, Xue Zheng, Wuyin Lin, Johannes Quaas, Hélène Chepfer, Michael A. Brunke, Xubin Zeng, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Samson Hagos, Zhibo Zhang, Hua Song, Xiaohong Liu, Michael S. Pritchard, Hui Wan, Jingyu Wang, Qi Tang, Peter M. Caldwell, Jiwen Fan, Larry K. Berg, Jerome D. Fast, Mark A. Taylor, Jean-Christophe Golaz, Shaocheng Xie, Philip J. Rasch, and L. Ruby Leung
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2881–2916, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2881-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2881-2022, 2022
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An alternative set of parameters for E3SM Atmospheric Model version 1 has been developed based on a tuning strategy that focuses on clouds. When clouds in every regime are improved, other aspects of the model are also improved, even though they are not the direct targets for calibration. The recalibrated model shows a lower sensitivity to anthropogenic aerosols and surface warming, suggesting potential improvements to the simulated climate in the past and future.
Ka Ming Fung, Colette L. Heald, Jesse H. Kroll, Siyuan Wang, Duseong S. Jo, Andrew Gettelman, Zheng Lu, Xiaohong Liu, Rahul A. Zaveri, Eric C. Apel, Donald R. Blake, Jose-Luis Jimenez, Pedro Campuzano-Jost, Patrick R. Veres, Timothy S. Bates, John E. Shilling, and Maria Zawadowicz
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 1549–1573, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-1549-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-1549-2022, 2022
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Understanding the natural aerosol burden in the preindustrial era is crucial for us to assess how atmospheric aerosols affect the Earth's radiative budgets. Our study explores how a detailed description of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) oxidation (implemented in the Community Atmospheric Model version 6 with chemistry, CAM6-chem) could help us better estimate the present-day and preindustrial concentrations of sulfate and other relevant chemicals, as well as the resulting aerosol radiative impacts.
Matthew W. Christensen, Andrew Gettelman, Jan Cermak, Guy Dagan, Michael Diamond, Alyson Douglas, Graham Feingold, Franziska Glassmeier, Tom Goren, Daniel P. Grosvenor, Edward Gryspeerdt, Ralph Kahn, Zhanqing Li, Po-Lun Ma, Florent Malavelle, Isabel L. McCoy, Daniel T. McCoy, Greg McFarquhar, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Sandip Pal, Anna Possner, Adam Povey, Johannes Quaas, Daniel Rosenfeld, Anja Schmidt, Roland Schrödner, Armin Sorooshian, Philip Stier, Velle Toll, Duncan Watson-Parris, Robert Wood, Mingxi Yang, and Tianle Yuan
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 641–674, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-641-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-641-2022, 2022
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Trace gases and aerosols (tiny airborne particles) are released from a variety of point sources around the globe. Examples include volcanoes, industrial chimneys, forest fires, and ship stacks. These sources provide opportunistic experiments with which to quantify the role of aerosols in modifying cloud properties. We review the current state of understanding on the influence of aerosol on climate built from the wide range of natural and anthropogenic laboratories investigated in recent decades.
Andrew Gettelman, Chieh-Chieh Chen, and Charles G. Bardeen
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 9405–9416, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-9405-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-9405-2021, 2021
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The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant economic disruption in 2020 and severely impacted air traffic. We use a climate model to evaluate the effect of the reductions in aviation on climate in 2020. Contrails, in general, warm the planet, and COVID-19-related reductions in contrails cooled the land surface in 2020. The timing of reductions in aviation was important, and this may change how we think about the future effects of contrails.
Edward Gryspeerdt, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Andrew Gettelman, Florent F. Malavelle, Hugh Morrison, David Neubauer, Daniel G. Partridge, Philip Stier, Toshihiko Takemura, Hailong Wang, Minghuai Wang, and Kai Zhang
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 613–623, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-613-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-613-2020, 2020
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Aerosol radiative forcing is a key uncertainty in our understanding of the human forcing of the climate, with much of this uncertainty coming from aerosol impacts on clouds. Observation-based estimates of the radiative forcing are typically smaller than those from global models, but it is not clear if they are more reliable. This work shows how the forcing components in global climate models can be identified, highlighting similarities between the two methods and areas for future investigation.
Lei Lin, Andrew Gettelman, Yangyang Xu, Chenglai Wu, Zhili Wang, Nan Rosenbloom, Susan C. Bates, and Wenjie Dong
Geosci. Model Dev., 12, 3773–3793, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-3773-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-3773-2019, 2019
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Here we evaluate the performance of the Community Atmosphere Model version 6 (CAM6) released in 2018, with the default 1º horizontal resolution and a higher-resolution simulation (approximately 0.25º), against various precipitation observational datasets over Asia. With the prognostic treatment of precipitation processes (which is missing in CAM5) and the new microphysics module, CAM6 is able to better simulate climatological mean and extreme precipitation over Asia.
Edward Gryspeerdt, Tom Goren, Odran Sourdeval, Johannes Quaas, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Sudhakar Dipu, Claudia Unglaub, Andrew Gettelman, and Matthew Christensen
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 5331–5347, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-5331-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-5331-2019, 2019
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The liquid water path (LWP) is the strongest control on cloud albedo, such that a small change in LWP can have a large radiative impact. By changing the droplet number concentration (Nd) aerosols may be able to change the LWP, but the sign and magnitude of the effect is unclear. This work uses satellite data to investigate the relationship between Nd and LWP at a global scale and in response to large aerosol perturbations, suggesting that a strong decrease in LWP at high Nd may be overestimated.
Peter A. Bogenschutz, Andrew Gettelman, Cecile Hannay, Vincent E. Larson, Richard B. Neale, Cheryl Craig, and Chih-Chieh Chen
Geosci. Model Dev., 11, 235–255, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-235-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-235-2018, 2018
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This paper compares results of developmental versions of a widely used climate model. The simulations only differ in the choice of how to model the sub-grid-scale physics in the atmospheric model. This work is novel because it is the first time that a particular physics option has been tested in a fully coupled climate model. Here, we demonstrate that this physics option has the ability to produce credible coupled climate simulations, with improved metrics in certain fields.
Chenglai Wu, Xiaohong Liu, Minghui Diao, Kai Zhang, Andrew Gettelman, Zheng Lu, Joyce E. Penner, and Zhaohui Lin
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 4731–4749, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-4731-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-4731-2017, 2017
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This study utilizes a novel approach to directly compare the CAM5-simulated cloud macro- and microphysics with the collocated HIPPO observations for the period of 2009 to 2011. The model cannot capture the large spatial variabilities of observed RH, which is responsible for much of the model missing low-level warm clouds. A large portion of the RH bias results from the discrepancy in water vapor. The model underestimates the observed number concentration and ice water content.
Andrew Gettelman, Chih-Chieh Chen, Mark Z. Jacobson, Mary A. Cameron, Donald J. Wuebbles, and Arezoo Khodayari
Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2017-218, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2017-218, 2017
Revised manuscript not accepted
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Aviation emissions create several impacts on climate. Condensation trails (contrails) are aviation produced cirrus clouds. Aircraft also emit aerosols, including soot (black carbon) and sulfate. Analyses of the climate effects of 2050 aviation emissions have been conducted with two coupled Chemistry Climate Models (CCMs) including experiments with coupled ocean models.
Chih-Chieh Chen and Andrew Gettelman
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 7317–7333, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-7317-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-7317-2016, 2016
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The impact of aviation emissions through 2050 is simulated by a comprehensive global climate model. Four different future emission scenarios of the same flight tracks are considered. The results reveal that the global radiative forcing of contrail cirrus is positive and can increase by a factor of 7 in 2050 from the 2006 level. The aviation aerosols can produce negative forcing, mainly over the oceans, and increase by a factor of 4 in 2050 from the 2006 level.
Shipeng Zhang, Minghuai Wang, Steven J. Ghan, Aijun Ding, Hailong Wang, Kai Zhang, David Neubauer, Ulrike Lohmann, Sylvaine Ferrachat, Toshihiko Takeamura, Andrew Gettelman, Hugh Morrison, Yunha Lee, Drew T. Shindell, Daniel G. Partridge, Philip Stier, Zak Kipling, and Congbin Fu
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 2765–2783, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-2765-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-2765-2016, 2016
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The variation of aerosol indirect effects (AIE) in several climate models is investigated across different dynamical regimes. Regimes with strong large-scale ascent are shown to be as important as stratocumulus regimes in studying AIE. AIE over regions with high monthly large-scale surface precipitation rate contributes the most to the total aerosol indirect forcing. These results point to the need to reduce the uncertainty in AIE in different dynamical regimes.
K. Thayer-Calder, A. Gettelman, C. Craig, S. Goldhaber, P. A. Bogenschutz, C.-C. Chen, H. Morrison, J. Höft, E. Raut, B. M. Griffin, J. K. Weber, V. E. Larson, M. C. Wyant, M. Wang, Z. Guo, and S. J. Ghan
Geosci. Model Dev., 8, 3801–3821, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-8-3801-2015, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-8-3801-2015, 2015
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This study evaluates a unified cloud parameterization and a Monte Carlo microphysics interface that is implemented in CAM v5.3. We show mean climate and tropical variability results from global simulations. The model has a degradation in precipitation skill but improvements in shortwave cloud forcing, liquid water path, long-wave cloud forcing, precipitable water, and tropical wave simulation. We also show estimation of computational expense and sensitivity to number of subcolumns.
T. Eidhammer, H. Morrison, A. Bansemer, A. Gettelman, and A. J. Heymsfield
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 10103–10118, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-10103-2014, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-10103-2014, 2014
M. S. Johnston, S. Eliasson, P. Eriksson, R. M. Forbes, A. Gettelman, P. Räisänen, and M. D. Zelinka
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 8701–8721, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8701-2014, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8701-2014, 2014
D. Barahona, A. Molod, J. Bacmeister, A. Nenes, A. Gettelman, H. Morrison, V. Phillips, and A. Eichmann
Geosci. Model Dev., 7, 1733–1766, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-7-1733-2014, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-7-1733-2014, 2014
C.-C. Chen and A. Gettelman
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 13, 12525–12536, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-13-12525-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-13-12525-2013, 2013
A. Gettelman, H. Morrison, C. R. Terai, and R. Wood
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 13, 9855–9867, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-13-9855-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-13-9855-2013, 2013
Ci Song, Daniel T. McCoy, Isabel L. McCoy, Hunter Brown, Andrew Gettelman, Trude Eidhammer, and Donifan Barahona
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2009, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2009, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP).
Short summary
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This study examines how aerosols from human activities alter cloud microphysical properties. Airborne observations from a field campaign are used to constrain an ensemble of global model configurations and their associated cloud property changes. Results show that airborne in-situ measurements of aerosol and cloud properties do provide insight into global changes in cloud microphysics but are sensitive to uncertainties in both airborne measurements and Earth system model emulators.
Naser Mahfouz, Hassan Beydoun, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Noel Keen, Adam C. Varble, Luca Bertagna, Peter Bogenschutz, Andrew Bradley, Matthew W. Christensen, T. Conrad Clevenger, Aaron Donahue, Jerome Fast, James Foucar, Jean-Christophe Golaz, Oksana Guba, Walter Hannah, Benjamin Hillman, Robert Jacob, Wuyin Lin, Po-Lun Ma, Yun Qian, Balwinder Singh, Christopher Terai, Hailong Wang, Mingxuan Wu, Kai Zhang, Andrew Gettelman, Mark Taylor, L. Ruby Leung, Peter Caldwell, and Susannah Burrows
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1868, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1868, 2025
Short summary
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Our study assesses the aerosol effective radiative forcing in a global cloud-resolving atmosphere model at ultra-high resolution. We demonstrate that global ERFaer signal can be robustly reproduced across resolutions when aerosol activation processes are carefully parameterized. Further, we argue that simplified prescribed aerosol schemes will open the door for further process/mechanism studies under controlled conditions.
August Mikkelsen, Daniel T. McCoy, Trude Eidhammer, Andrew Gettelman, Ci Song, Hamish Gordon, and Isabel L. McCoy
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 4547–4570, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4547-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4547-2025, 2025
Short summary
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Whether increased aerosol increases or decreases liquid cloud mass has been a longstanding question. Observed correlations suggest that aerosols thin liquid cloud, but we are able to show that observations were consistent with an increase in liquid cloud in response to aerosols by leveraging a model where causality could be traced.
Weiyu Zhang, Kwinten Van Weverberg, Cyril J. Morcrette, Wuhu Feng, Kalli Furtado, Paul R. Field, Chih-Chieh Chen, Andrew Gettelman, Piers M. Forster, Daniel R. Marsh, and Alexandru Rap
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 473–489, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-473-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-473-2025, 2025
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Contrail cirrus is the largest, but also most uncertain, contribution of aviation to global warming. We evaluate, for the first time, the impact of the host climate model on contrail cirrus properties. Substantial differences exist between contrail cirrus formation, persistence, and radiative effects in the host climate models. Reliable contrail cirrus simulations require advanced representation of cloud optical properties and microphysics, which should be better constrained by observations.
Johannes Mülmenstädt, Andrew S. Ackerman, Ann M. Fridlind, Meng Huang, Po-Lun Ma, Naser Mahfouz, Susanne E. Bauer, Susannah M. Burrows, Matthew W. Christensen, Sudhakar Dipu, Andrew Gettelman, L. Ruby Leung, Florian Tornow, Johannes Quaas, Adam C. Varble, Hailong Wang, Kai Zhang, and Youtong Zheng
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 13633–13652, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13633-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13633-2024, 2024
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Stratocumulus clouds play a large role in Earth's climate by reflecting incoming solar energy back to space. Turbulence at stratocumulus cloud top mixes in dry, warm air, which can lead to cloud dissipation. This process is challenging for coarse-resolution global models to represent. We show that global models nevertheless agree well with our process understanding. Global models also think the process is less important for the climate than other lines of evidence have led us to conclude.
Andrew Gettelman, Richard Forbes, Roger Marchand, Chih-Chieh Chen, and Mark Fielding
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8069–8092, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8069-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8069-2024, 2024
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Supercooled liquid clouds (liquid clouds colder than 0°C) are common at higher latitudes (especially over the Southern Ocean) and are critical for constraining climate projections. We compare a single-column version of a weather model to observations with two different cloud schemes and find that both the dynamical environment and atmospheric aerosols are important for reproducing observations.
Trude Eidhammer, Andrew Gettelman, Katherine Thayer-Calder, Duncan Watson-Parris, Gregory Elsaesser, Hugh Morrison, Marcus van Lier-Walqui, Ci Song, and Daniel McCoy
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 7835–7853, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-7835-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-7835-2024, 2024
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We describe a dataset where 45 parameters related to cloud processes in the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2) Community Atmosphere Model version 6 (CAM6) are perturbed. Three sets of perturbed parameter ensembles (263 members) were created: current climate, preindustrial aerosol loading and future climate with sea surface temperature increased by 4 K.
Johannes Mülmenstädt, Edward Gryspeerdt, Sudhakar Dipu, Johannes Quaas, Andrew S. Ackerman, Ann M. Fridlind, Florian Tornow, Susanne E. Bauer, Andrew Gettelman, Yi Ming, Youtong Zheng, Po-Lun Ma, Hailong Wang, Kai Zhang, Matthew W. Christensen, Adam C. Varble, L. Ruby Leung, Xiaohong Liu, David Neubauer, Daniel G. Partridge, Philip Stier, and Toshihiko Takemura
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 7331–7345, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-7331-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-7331-2024, 2024
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Human activities release copious amounts of small particles called aerosols into the atmosphere. These particles change how much sunlight clouds reflect to space, an important human perturbation of the climate, whose magnitude is highly uncertain. We found that the latest climate models show a negative correlation but a positive causal relationship between aerosols and cloud water. This means we need to be very careful when we interpret observational studies that can only see correlation.
Piers M. Forster, Chris Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Bradley Hall, Mathias Hauser, Aurélien Ribes, Debbie Rosen, Nathan P. Gillett, Matthew D. Palmer, Joeri Rogelj, Karina von Schuckmann, Blair Trewin, Myles Allen, Robbie Andrew, Richard A. Betts, Alex Borger, Tim Boyer, Jiddu A. Broersma, Carlo Buontempo, Samantha Burgess, Chiara Cagnazzo, Lijing Cheng, Pierre Friedlingstein, Andrew Gettelman, Johannes Gütschow, Masayoshi Ishii, Stuart Jenkins, Xin Lan, Colin Morice, Jens Mühle, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel E. Killick, Paul B. Krummel, Jan C. Minx, Gunnar Myhre, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Sophie Szopa, Peter Thorne, Mahesh V. M. Kovilakam, Elisa Majamäki, Jukka-Pekka Jalkanen, Margreet van Marle, Rachel M. Hoesly, Robert Rohde, Dominik Schumacher, Guido van der Werf, Russell Vose, Kirsten Zickfeld, Xuebin Zhang, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 2625–2658, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2625-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2625-2024, 2024
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This paper tracks some key indicators of global warming through time, from 1850 through to the end of 2023. It is designed to give an authoritative estimate of global warming to date and its causes. We find that in 2023, global warming reached 1.3 °C and is increasing at over 0.2 °C per decade. This is caused by all-time-high greenhouse gas emissions.
Andrew Gettelman
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 4937–4956, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-4937-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-4937-2023, 2023
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A representation of rainbows is developed for a climate model. The diagnostic raises many common issues. Simulated rainbows are evaluated against limited observations. The pattern of rainbows in the model matches observations and theory about when and where rainbows are most common. The diagnostic is used to assess the past and future state of rainbows. Changes to clouds from climate change are expected to increase rainbows as cloud cover decreases in a warmer world.
Koichi Sakaguchi, L. Ruby Leung, Colin M. Zarzycki, Jihyeon Jang, Seth McGinnis, Bryce E. Harrop, William C. Skamarock, Andrew Gettelman, Chun Zhao, William J. Gutowski, Stephen Leak, and Linda Mearns
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 3029–3081, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-3029-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-3029-2023, 2023
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We document details of the regional climate downscaling dataset produced by a global variable-resolution model. The experiment is unique in that it follows a standard protocol designed for coordinated experiments of regional models. We found negligible influence of post-processing on statistical analysis, importance of simulation quality outside of the target region, and computational challenges that our model code faced due to rapidly changing super computer systems.
Andrew Gettelman, Hugh Morrison, Trude Eidhammer, Katherine Thayer-Calder, Jian Sun, Richard Forbes, Zachary McGraw, Jiang Zhu, Trude Storelvmo, and John Dennis
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 1735–1754, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-1735-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-1735-2023, 2023
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Clouds are a critical part of weather and climate prediction. In this work, we document updates and corrections to the description of clouds used in several Earth system models. These updates include the ability to run the scheme on graphics processing units (GPUs), changes to the numerical description of precipitation, and a correction to the ice number. There are big improvements in the computational performance that can be achieved with GPU acceleration.
Xingying Huang, Andrew Gettelman, William C. Skamarock, Peter Hjort Lauritzen, Miles Curry, Adam Herrington, John T. Truesdale, and Michael Duda
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 8135–8151, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-8135-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-8135-2022, 2022
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We focus on the recent development of a state-of-the-art storm-resolving global climate model and investigate how this next-generation model performs for precipitation prediction over the western USA. Results show realistic representations of precipitation with significantly enhanced snowpack over complex terrains. The model evaluation advances the unified modeling of large-scale forcing constraints and realistic fine-scale features to advance multi-scale climate predictions and changes.
Po-Lun Ma, Bryce E. Harrop, Vincent E. Larson, Richard B. Neale, Andrew Gettelman, Hugh Morrison, Hailong Wang, Kai Zhang, Stephen A. Klein, Mark D. Zelinka, Yuying Zhang, Yun Qian, Jin-Ho Yoon, Christopher R. Jones, Meng Huang, Sheng-Lun Tai, Balwinder Singh, Peter A. Bogenschutz, Xue Zheng, Wuyin Lin, Johannes Quaas, Hélène Chepfer, Michael A. Brunke, Xubin Zeng, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Samson Hagos, Zhibo Zhang, Hua Song, Xiaohong Liu, Michael S. Pritchard, Hui Wan, Jingyu Wang, Qi Tang, Peter M. Caldwell, Jiwen Fan, Larry K. Berg, Jerome D. Fast, Mark A. Taylor, Jean-Christophe Golaz, Shaocheng Xie, Philip J. Rasch, and L. Ruby Leung
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2881–2916, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2881-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2881-2022, 2022
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An alternative set of parameters for E3SM Atmospheric Model version 1 has been developed based on a tuning strategy that focuses on clouds. When clouds in every regime are improved, other aspects of the model are also improved, even though they are not the direct targets for calibration. The recalibrated model shows a lower sensitivity to anthropogenic aerosols and surface warming, suggesting potential improvements to the simulated climate in the past and future.
Ka Ming Fung, Colette L. Heald, Jesse H. Kroll, Siyuan Wang, Duseong S. Jo, Andrew Gettelman, Zheng Lu, Xiaohong Liu, Rahul A. Zaveri, Eric C. Apel, Donald R. Blake, Jose-Luis Jimenez, Pedro Campuzano-Jost, Patrick R. Veres, Timothy S. Bates, John E. Shilling, and Maria Zawadowicz
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 1549–1573, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-1549-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-1549-2022, 2022
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Understanding the natural aerosol burden in the preindustrial era is crucial for us to assess how atmospheric aerosols affect the Earth's radiative budgets. Our study explores how a detailed description of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) oxidation (implemented in the Community Atmospheric Model version 6 with chemistry, CAM6-chem) could help us better estimate the present-day and preindustrial concentrations of sulfate and other relevant chemicals, as well as the resulting aerosol radiative impacts.
Matthew W. Christensen, Andrew Gettelman, Jan Cermak, Guy Dagan, Michael Diamond, Alyson Douglas, Graham Feingold, Franziska Glassmeier, Tom Goren, Daniel P. Grosvenor, Edward Gryspeerdt, Ralph Kahn, Zhanqing Li, Po-Lun Ma, Florent Malavelle, Isabel L. McCoy, Daniel T. McCoy, Greg McFarquhar, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Sandip Pal, Anna Possner, Adam Povey, Johannes Quaas, Daniel Rosenfeld, Anja Schmidt, Roland Schrödner, Armin Sorooshian, Philip Stier, Velle Toll, Duncan Watson-Parris, Robert Wood, Mingxi Yang, and Tianle Yuan
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 641–674, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-641-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-641-2022, 2022
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Trace gases and aerosols (tiny airborne particles) are released from a variety of point sources around the globe. Examples include volcanoes, industrial chimneys, forest fires, and ship stacks. These sources provide opportunistic experiments with which to quantify the role of aerosols in modifying cloud properties. We review the current state of understanding on the influence of aerosol on climate built from the wide range of natural and anthropogenic laboratories investigated in recent decades.
Andrew Gettelman, Chieh-Chieh Chen, and Charles G. Bardeen
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 9405–9416, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-9405-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-9405-2021, 2021
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The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant economic disruption in 2020 and severely impacted air traffic. We use a climate model to evaluate the effect of the reductions in aviation on climate in 2020. Contrails, in general, warm the planet, and COVID-19-related reductions in contrails cooled the land surface in 2020. The timing of reductions in aviation was important, and this may change how we think about the future effects of contrails.
Edward Gryspeerdt, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Andrew Gettelman, Florent F. Malavelle, Hugh Morrison, David Neubauer, Daniel G. Partridge, Philip Stier, Toshihiko Takemura, Hailong Wang, Minghuai Wang, and Kai Zhang
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 613–623, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-613-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-613-2020, 2020
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Aerosol radiative forcing is a key uncertainty in our understanding of the human forcing of the climate, with much of this uncertainty coming from aerosol impacts on clouds. Observation-based estimates of the radiative forcing are typically smaller than those from global models, but it is not clear if they are more reliable. This work shows how the forcing components in global climate models can be identified, highlighting similarities between the two methods and areas for future investigation.
Lei Lin, Andrew Gettelman, Yangyang Xu, Chenglai Wu, Zhili Wang, Nan Rosenbloom, Susan C. Bates, and Wenjie Dong
Geosci. Model Dev., 12, 3773–3793, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-3773-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-3773-2019, 2019
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Here we evaluate the performance of the Community Atmosphere Model version 6 (CAM6) released in 2018, with the default 1º horizontal resolution and a higher-resolution simulation (approximately 0.25º), against various precipitation observational datasets over Asia. With the prognostic treatment of precipitation processes (which is missing in CAM5) and the new microphysics module, CAM6 is able to better simulate climatological mean and extreme precipitation over Asia.
Edward Gryspeerdt, Tom Goren, Odran Sourdeval, Johannes Quaas, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Sudhakar Dipu, Claudia Unglaub, Andrew Gettelman, and Matthew Christensen
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 5331–5347, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-5331-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-5331-2019, 2019
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The liquid water path (LWP) is the strongest control on cloud albedo, such that a small change in LWP can have a large radiative impact. By changing the droplet number concentration (Nd) aerosols may be able to change the LWP, but the sign and magnitude of the effect is unclear. This work uses satellite data to investigate the relationship between Nd and LWP at a global scale and in response to large aerosol perturbations, suggesting that a strong decrease in LWP at high Nd may be overestimated.
Peter A. Bogenschutz, Andrew Gettelman, Cecile Hannay, Vincent E. Larson, Richard B. Neale, Cheryl Craig, and Chih-Chieh Chen
Geosci. Model Dev., 11, 235–255, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-235-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-235-2018, 2018
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This paper compares results of developmental versions of a widely used climate model. The simulations only differ in the choice of how to model the sub-grid-scale physics in the atmospheric model. This work is novel because it is the first time that a particular physics option has been tested in a fully coupled climate model. Here, we demonstrate that this physics option has the ability to produce credible coupled climate simulations, with improved metrics in certain fields.
Chenglai Wu, Xiaohong Liu, Minghui Diao, Kai Zhang, Andrew Gettelman, Zheng Lu, Joyce E. Penner, and Zhaohui Lin
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 4731–4749, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-4731-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-4731-2017, 2017
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This study utilizes a novel approach to directly compare the CAM5-simulated cloud macro- and microphysics with the collocated HIPPO observations for the period of 2009 to 2011. The model cannot capture the large spatial variabilities of observed RH, which is responsible for much of the model missing low-level warm clouds. A large portion of the RH bias results from the discrepancy in water vapor. The model underestimates the observed number concentration and ice water content.
Andrew Gettelman, Chih-Chieh Chen, Mark Z. Jacobson, Mary A. Cameron, Donald J. Wuebbles, and Arezoo Khodayari
Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2017-218, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2017-218, 2017
Revised manuscript not accepted
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Aviation emissions create several impacts on climate. Condensation trails (contrails) are aviation produced cirrus clouds. Aircraft also emit aerosols, including soot (black carbon) and sulfate. Analyses of the climate effects of 2050 aviation emissions have been conducted with two coupled Chemistry Climate Models (CCMs) including experiments with coupled ocean models.
Chih-Chieh Chen and Andrew Gettelman
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 7317–7333, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-7317-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-7317-2016, 2016
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The impact of aviation emissions through 2050 is simulated by a comprehensive global climate model. Four different future emission scenarios of the same flight tracks are considered. The results reveal that the global radiative forcing of contrail cirrus is positive and can increase by a factor of 7 in 2050 from the 2006 level. The aviation aerosols can produce negative forcing, mainly over the oceans, and increase by a factor of 4 in 2050 from the 2006 level.
Shipeng Zhang, Minghuai Wang, Steven J. Ghan, Aijun Ding, Hailong Wang, Kai Zhang, David Neubauer, Ulrike Lohmann, Sylvaine Ferrachat, Toshihiko Takeamura, Andrew Gettelman, Hugh Morrison, Yunha Lee, Drew T. Shindell, Daniel G. Partridge, Philip Stier, Zak Kipling, and Congbin Fu
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 2765–2783, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-2765-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-2765-2016, 2016
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The variation of aerosol indirect effects (AIE) in several climate models is investigated across different dynamical regimes. Regimes with strong large-scale ascent are shown to be as important as stratocumulus regimes in studying AIE. AIE over regions with high monthly large-scale surface precipitation rate contributes the most to the total aerosol indirect forcing. These results point to the need to reduce the uncertainty in AIE in different dynamical regimes.
K. Thayer-Calder, A. Gettelman, C. Craig, S. Goldhaber, P. A. Bogenschutz, C.-C. Chen, H. Morrison, J. Höft, E. Raut, B. M. Griffin, J. K. Weber, V. E. Larson, M. C. Wyant, M. Wang, Z. Guo, and S. J. Ghan
Geosci. Model Dev., 8, 3801–3821, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-8-3801-2015, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-8-3801-2015, 2015
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This study evaluates a unified cloud parameterization and a Monte Carlo microphysics interface that is implemented in CAM v5.3. We show mean climate and tropical variability results from global simulations. The model has a degradation in precipitation skill but improvements in shortwave cloud forcing, liquid water path, long-wave cloud forcing, precipitable water, and tropical wave simulation. We also show estimation of computational expense and sensitivity to number of subcolumns.
T. Eidhammer, H. Morrison, A. Bansemer, A. Gettelman, and A. J. Heymsfield
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 10103–10118, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-10103-2014, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-10103-2014, 2014
M. S. Johnston, S. Eliasson, P. Eriksson, R. M. Forbes, A. Gettelman, P. Räisänen, and M. D. Zelinka
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 8701–8721, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8701-2014, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8701-2014, 2014
D. Barahona, A. Molod, J. Bacmeister, A. Nenes, A. Gettelman, H. Morrison, V. Phillips, and A. Eichmann
Geosci. Model Dev., 7, 1733–1766, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-7-1733-2014, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-7-1733-2014, 2014
C.-C. Chen and A. Gettelman
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 13, 12525–12536, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-13-12525-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-13-12525-2013, 2013
A. Gettelman, H. Morrison, C. R. Terai, and R. Wood
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 13, 9855–9867, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-13-9855-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-13-9855-2013, 2013
Related subject area
Subject: Clouds and Precipitation | Research Activity: Atmospheric Modelling and Data Analysis | Altitude Range: Troposphere | Science Focus: Physics (physical properties and processes)
Sensitivities of simulated mixed-phase Arctic multilayer clouds to primary and secondary ice processes
Assessing glaciogenic seeding impacts in Australia's Snowy Mountains: an ensemble modeling approach
How the representation of microphysical processes affects tropical condensate in the global storm-resolving model ICON
Magnitude and timescale of liquid water path adjustments to cloud droplet number concentration perturbations for nocturnal non-precipitating marine stratocumulus
Cold pools mediate mesoscale adjustments of trade-cumulus fields to changes in cloud droplet number concentration
Numerical case study of the aerosol–cloud interactions in warm boundary layer clouds over the eastern North Atlantic with an interactive chemistry module
Influence of temperature and humidity on contrail formation regions in the general circulation model EMAC: a spring case study
On the impact of thunder on cloud ice crystals and droplets
Counteracting influences of gravitational settling modulate aerosol impacts on cloud-base-lowering fog characteristics
The critical number and size of precipitation embryos to accelerate warm rain initiation
Impact on the stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition of the interaction of cloud microphysics and macrophysics with large-scale circulation
Technical note: Phase space depiction of cloud condensation nuclei activation and cloud droplet diffusional growth
Impact of wildfire smoke on Arctic cirrus formation – Part 2: Simulation of MOSAiC 2019–2020 cases
Constraining aerosol–cloud adjustments by uniting surface observations with a perturbed parameter ensemble
Investigating ice formation pathways using a novel two-moment multi-class cloud microphysics scheme
Exploiting airborne far-infrared measurements to optimise an ice cloud retrieval
Microphysics regimes due to haze–cloud interactions: cloud oscillation and cloud collapse
Microphysical fingerprints in anvil cloud albedo
Influence of Secondary Ice Production on cloud and rain properties: Analysis of the HYMEX IOP7a Heavy Precipitation Event
Factors Causing Stratocumulus to Deviate from Subtropical High Variability on Seasonal to Interannual Timescales
The influence of Amazonian anthropogenic emissions on new particle formation, aerosol, cloud and surface rain
Impact of secondary ice production on thunderstorm electrification under different aerosol conditions
Accelerated impact of airborne glaciogenic seeding of stratiform clouds by turbulence
Tropical cirrus evolution in a km-scale model with improved ice microphysics
Model analysis of biases in the satellite-diagnosed aerosol effect on the cloud liquid water path
Impacts of aerosol-radiation and aerosol-cloud interactions on a short-term heavy rainfall event – A case study in the Guanzhong Basin, China
Evaluation of biases in mid-to-high-latitude surface snowfall and cloud phase in ERA5 and CMIP6 using satellite observations
Failed cyclogenesis of a mesoscale convective system near Cape Verde: The role of the Saharan trade wind layer among other inhibiting factors observed during the CADDIWA field campaign
Dynamical imprints on precipitation cluster statistics across a hierarchy of high-resolution simulations
Ice formation processes key in determining WCB outflow cirrus properties
Role of a key microphysical factor in mixed-phase stratocumulus clouds and their interactions with aerosols
High-resolution modelling of early contrail evolution from hydrogen-powered aircraft
Investigating the impact of subgrid-scale aerosol-cloud interaction on mesoscale meteorology prediction
Identifying Synoptic Controls on Boundary Layer Thermodynamic and Cloud Properties in a Regional Forecast Model
Correction of ERA5 temperature and relative humidity biases by bivariate quantile mapping for contrail formation analysis
Can pollen affect precipitation?
Potential impacts of marine fuel regulations on an Arctic stratocumulus case and its radiative response
The subtleties of three-dimensional radiative effects in contrails and cirrus clouds
The impact of the mesh size and microphysics scheme on the representation of mid-level clouds in the ICON model in hilly and complex terrain
The role of ascent timescales for warm conveyor belt (WCB) moisture transport into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS)
On the Processes Determining the Slope of Cloud-Water Adjustments in Non-Precipitating Stratocumulus
High sensitivity of simulated fog properties to parameterized aerosol activation in case studies from ParisFog
Adiabatic and radiative cooling are both important causes of aerosol activation in simulated fog events in Europe
Estimating the concentration of silver iodide needed to detect unambiguous signatures of glaciogenic cloud seeding
Ice-nucleating particle concentration impacts cloud properties over Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica, in COSMO-CLM2
Numerical simulation of aerosol concentration effects on cloud droplet size spectrum evolutions of warm stratiform clouds in Jiangxi, China
The impact of aerosol on cloud water: a heuristic perspective
The presence of clouds lowers climate sensitivity in the MPI-ESM1.2 climate model
Diurnal variation in an amplified canopy urban heat island during heat wave periods in the megacity of Beijing: roles of mountain–valley breeze and urban morphology
Diurnal evolution of non-precipitating marine stratocumuli in a large-eddy simulation ensemble
Gabriella Wallentin, Annika Oertel, Luisa Ickes, Peggy Achtert, Matthias Tesche, and Corinna Hoose
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 6607–6631, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6607-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6607-2025, 2025
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Multilayer clouds are common in the Arctic but remain underrepresented. We use an atmospheric model to simulate multilayer cloud cases from the Arctic expedition MOSAiC 2019/2020. We find that it is complex to accurately model these cloud layers due to the lack of correct temperature profiles. The model also struggles to capture the observed cloud phase and the relative concentration of cloud droplets and cloud ice. We constrain our model to measured aerosols to mitigate this issue.
Sisi Chen, Lulin Xue, Sarah A. Tessendorf, Thomas Chubb, Andrew Peace, Suzanne Kenyon, Johanna Speirs, Jamie Wolff, and Bill Petzke
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 6703–6724, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6703-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6703-2025, 2025
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This study aims to investigate how cloud seeding affects snowfall in Australia's Snowy Mountains. By running simulations with different setups, we found that seeding impact varies greatly with weather conditions. Seeding increased snow in stable weather but sometimes reduced it in stormy weather. This helps us to better understand when seeding works best to boost water supplies.
Ann Kristin Naumann, Monika Esch, and Bjorn Stevens
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 6429–6444, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6429-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6429-2025, 2025
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This study explores how uncertainties in the representation of microphysical processes affect the tropical condensate distribution in the global storm-resolving model ICON. The results point to the importance of the fall speed of hydrometeor particles and to a simple relationship: the faster a condensate falls, the less there is of it. Implications for the energy balance and precipitation properties are discussed.
Yao-Sheng Chen, Prasanth Prabhakaran, Fabian Hoffmann, Jan Kazil, Takanobu Yamaguchi, and Graham Feingold
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 6141–6159, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6141-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6141-2025, 2025
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Injecting sea salt aerosols into marine stratiform clouds can distribute the cloud water over more droplets in smaller sizes. This process is expected to make the clouds brighter, allowing them to reflect more sunlight back to space. However, it may also cause the clouds to lose water over time, reducing their ability to reflect sunlight. We use a computer model to show that the loss of cloud water occurs relatively quickly and does not completely offset the initial brightening.
Pouriya Alinaghi, Fredrik Jansson, Daniel A. Blázquez, and Franziska Glassmeier
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 6121–6139, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6121-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6121-2025, 2025
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Shallow clouds in the trades are a major source of uncertainty in climate projections. These clouds organize into striking mesoscale patterns that are exactly what climate models lack. This study explores the origin of such patterns and investigates how variations in microscale properties control them. The importance of microscale effects is compared to that of large-scale forcing on the mesoscale organization of trade-cumulus fields.
Hsiang-He Lee, Xue Zheng, Shaoyue Qiu, and Yuan Wang
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 6069–6091, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6069-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6069-2025, 2025
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The study investigates how aerosol–cloud interactions affect warm boundary layer stratiform clouds over the eastern North Atlantic. High-resolution weather model simulations reveal that non-rain clouds at the edge of cloud systems are prone to evaporation, leading to an aerosol drying effect and a transition of aerosols back to the accumulation mode for future activation. The study shows that this dynamic behavior is often not adequately represented in most previous prescribed-aerosol simulations.
Patrick Peter, Sigrun Matthes, Christine Frömming, Patrick Jöckel, Luca Bugliaro, Andreas Giez, Martina Krämer, and Volker Grewe
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 5911–5934, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5911-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5911-2025, 2025
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Our study examines how well the global climate model EMAC (ECHAM/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry) predicts contrail formation by analysing temperature and humidity – two key factors for contrail development and persistence. The model underestimates temperature, leading to an overprediction of contrail formation and larger ice-supersaturated regions. Adjusting the model improves temperature accuracy but adds uncertainties. Better predictions of contrail formation areas can help optimise flight tracks to reduce aviation's climate effect.
Konstantinos Kourtidis, Stavros Stathopoulos, and Vassilis Amiridis
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 5935–5946, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5935-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5935-2025, 2025
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The sound of thunder induces mechanical effects on cloud droplets and ice particles, causing changes in their size distribution. A shock wave near the lightning channel causes extensive shattering of cloud particles. At a distance, the audio wave will cause agglomeration of particles. So, thunder may influence the rain generation process and the radiative properties of clouds. As global warming may influence the occurrence rate of lightning, a climate feedback may be induced by these mechanisms.
Nathan H. Pope and Adele L. Igel
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 5433–5444, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5433-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5433-2025, 2025
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We used an atmospheric model that simulates a single column to study the sensitivity of marine fog formed through the lowering of the base of a stratus cloud to meteorology and aerosols. We found that higher aerosol concentration reduces the likelihood and duration of fog but leads to denser fog. This overall trend was caused by multiple physical mechanisms depending on conditions.
Jung-Sub Lim, Yign Noh, Hyunho Lee, and Fabian Hoffmann
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 5313–5329, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5313-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5313-2025, 2025
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Rain formation in warm clouds begins when small droplets collide, but this process can be slow without larger droplets. We used simulations to explore the role of bigger droplets, known as precipitation embryos, in triggering rain. We found that they speed up rain only when their size and number exceed a critical threshold. This threshold becomes larger when collisions are naturally efficient, such as in clouds with broad droplet size distributions or strong turbulence.
Je-Yun Chun, Robert Wood, Peter N. Blossey, and Sarah J. Doherty
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 5251–5271, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5251-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5251-2025, 2025
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This study explores how aerosols affect clouds transitioning from stratocumulus to cumulus along trade winds under varying atmospheric conditions. We found that aerosols typically reduce precipitation and raise cloud height, but their impact changes when subsidence changes by aerosol enhancement are considered. Our findings indicate that the cooling effect of aerosols might be overestimated if these atmospheric changes are not accounted for.
Wojciech W. Grabowski and Hanna Pawlowska
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 5273–5285, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5273-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5273-2025, 2025
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A simple diagram to depict cloud droplets' formation via the activation of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) as well as their subsequent growth and evaporation is presented.
Albert Ansmann, Cristofer Jimenez, Daniel A. Knopf, Johanna Roschke, Johannes Bühl, Kevin Ohneiser, and Ronny Engelmann
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 4867–4884, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4867-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4867-2025, 2025
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In this study, we focus on the potential impact of wildfire smoke on cirrus formation. Aerosol and cirrus observations with lidar and radar during the MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition, presented in the companion paper (Ansmann et al., 2025), are closely linked to comprehensive modeling of ice nucleation in cirrus evolution processes, presented in this article. A clear impact of wildfire smoke on cirrus formation was found.
August Mikkelsen, Daniel T. McCoy, Trude Eidhammer, Andrew Gettelman, Ci Song, Hamish Gordon, and Isabel L. McCoy
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 4547–4570, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4547-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4547-2025, 2025
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Whether increased aerosol increases or decreases liquid cloud mass has been a longstanding question. Observed correlations suggest that aerosols thin liquid cloud, but we are able to show that observations were consistent with an increase in liquid cloud in response to aerosols by leveraging a model where causality could be traced.
Tim Lüttmer, Peter Spichtinger, and Axel Seifert
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 4505–4529, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4505-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4505-2025, 2025
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We investigate ice formation pathways in idealized convective clouds using a novel microphysics scheme that distinguishes between five ice classes each with their own unique formation mechanism. Ice crystals from rime splintering form the lowermost layer of ice crystals around the updraft core. The majority of ice crystals in the anvil of the convective cloud stems from frozen droplets. Ice stemming from homogeneous and deposition nucleation was only relevant in the overshoot.
Sanjeevani Panditharatne, Helen Brindley, Caroline Cox, Rui Song, Richard Siddans, Richard Bantges, Jonathan Murray, Stuart Fox, and Cathryn Fox
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-647, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-647, 2025
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Upwelling radiation with wavelengths between 15 and 100 microns is theorised to be highly sensitive to the properties of ice clouds, particularly the shape of the ice crystals. We exploit this sensitivity and perform the first retrieval of ice cloud properties using these wavelengths from an observation taken on an aircraft and evaluate it against measurements of the cloud’s properties.
Fan Yang, Hamed Fahandezh Sadi, Raymond A. Shaw, Fabian Hoffmann, Pei Hou, Aaron Wang, and Mikhail Ovchinnikov
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 3785–3806, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-3785-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-3785-2025, 2025
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Large-eddy simulations of a convection cloud chamber show two new microphysics regimes, cloud oscillation and cloud collapse, due to haze–cloud interactions. Our results suggest that haze particles and their interactions with cloud droplets should be considered especially in polluted conditions. To properly simulate haze–cloud interactions, we need to resolve droplet activation and deactivation processes, instead of using Twomey-type activation parameterization.
Declan L. Finney, Alan M. Blyth, Paul R. Field, Martin I. Daily, Benjamin J. Murray, Mengyu Sun, Paul J. Connolly, Zhiqiang Cui, and Steven Böing
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1227, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1227, 2025
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We present observation-informed modelling from the Deep Convective Microphysics Experiment to study how environmental conditions and cloud processes affect anvil cloud albedo and radiation. Aerosols influencing cloud droplets or influencing ice formation yield varying radiative effects. We introduce fingerprint metrics to discern these effects. Using detailed observations and modelling, we offer insights into high cloud radiative effects and feedbacks.
Pierre Grzegorczyk, Wolfram Wobrock, Aymeric Dziduch, and Céline Planche
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-819, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-819, 2025
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The impact of secondary ice production (SIP) on a HYMEX intense precipitation event is investigated using 3D bin microphysics. Including SIP improves agreement with in situ aircraft observations (ice crystal number concentration and supercooled drop number fraction), generates small ice crystals and redistributes condensed water mass toward smaller particle sizes. As these crystals melt, the liquid precipitation flux decreases, reducing total precipitation by 8 % and heavy rainfall by 20 %.
Hairu Ding, Bjorn Stevens, and Hauke Schmidt
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-876, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-876, 2025
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This study examines the physical link between subtropical highs and stratocumulus variability. Using reanalysis data, we test two proposed pathways—one at the surface and one in the free troposphere—but find that neither is a dominant mechanism for stratocumulus variability on seasonal and interannual timescales. These results challenge the assumed influence of subtropical highs on stratocumulus and highlight the need for further research into lower tropospheric stability dynamics.
Xuemei Wang, Kenneth S. Carslaw, Daniel P. Grosvenor, and Hamish Gordon
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-132, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-132, 2025
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Anthropogenic emissions can influence aerosol particle number concentrations via new particle formation. Our model simulations predict around 10 % increase of the particle and cloud droplet number concentrations when doubling the emissions in the Manaus region in the Amazonian wet season. However, the corresponding changes in cloud water and rain mass are around 4 %. Such weak response implied that this convective environment is not sensitive to the localised anthropogenic emission changes here.
Shiye Huang, Jing Yang, Jiaojiao Li, Qian Chen, Qilin Zhang, and Fengxia Guo
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 1831–1850, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1831-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1831-2025, 2025
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Aerosol and secondary ice production are both vital to charge separation in thunderstorms, but the relative importance of different SIP processes to cloud electrification under different aerosol conditions is not well understood. In this study, we show in a clean environment, the shattering of freezing drops has the greatest effect on the charging rate, while in a polluted environment, both rime splintering and the shattering of freezing drops have a significant effect on cloud electrification.
Meilian Chen, Xiaoqin Jing, Jiaojiao Li, Jing Yang, Xiaobo Dong, Bart Geerts, Yan Yin, Baojun Chen, Lulin Xue, Mengyu Huang, Ping Tian, and Shaofeng Hua
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-47, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-47, 2025
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Several recent studies have reported complete cloud glaciation induced by airborne-based glaciogenic cloud seeding over plains. Since turbulence is an important factor to maintain clouds in mixed-phase, it is hypothesized that turbulence may have an impact on the seeding effect. This hypothesis is evident in the present study, which shows turbulence can accelerate the impact of airborne glaciogenic seeding of stratiform clouds.
Blaž Gasparini, Rachel Atlas, Aiko Voigt, Martina Krämer, and Peter N. Blossey
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-203, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-203, 2025
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Tropical cirrus clouds, especially their evolution, are poorly understood, contributing to uncertainty in climate projections. We address this by using novel tracers in a cloud-resolving model to track the life cycle of cirrus clouds, providing insights into cloud formation, ice crystal evolution, and radiative effects. We also improve the model's cloud microphysics with a simple, computationally efficient approach that can be applied to other models.
Harri Kokkola, Juha Tonttila, Silvia M. Calderón, Sami Romakkaniemi, Antti Lipponen, Aapo Peräkorpi, Tero Mielonen, Edward Gryspeerdt, Timo Henrik Virtanen, Pekka Kolmonen, and Antti Arola
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 1533–1543, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1533-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1533-2025, 2025
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Understanding how atmospheric aerosols affect clouds is a scientific challenge. One question is how aerosols affects the amount of cloud water. We used a cloud-scale model to study these effects on marine clouds. The study showed that variations in cloud properties and instrument noise can cause bias in satellite-derived cloud water content. However, our results suggest that for similar weather conditions with well-defined aerosol concentrations, satellite data can reliably track these effects.
Naifang Bei, Bo Xiao, Ruonan Wang, Yuning Yang, Lang Liu, Yongming Han, and Guohui Li
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3558, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3558, 2025
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This study uses a cloud-resolving model to examine how aerosols influence a mesoscale convective system (MCS) in central China via aerosol-radiation (ARIs) and aerosol-cloud interactions (ACIs). Without ARIs, added aerosols don’t significantly affect precipitation due to cloud competition for moisture. ARIs can stabilize or enhance convection. High aerosol levels lead to a combined ARI and ACI effect that greatly reduces precipitation.
Franziska Hellmuth, Tim Carlsen, Anne Sophie Daloz, Robert Oscar David, Haochi Che, and Trude Storelvmo
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 1353–1383, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1353-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1353-2025, 2025
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This article compares the occurrence of supercooled liquid-containing clouds (sLCCs) and their link to surface snowfall in CloudSat–CALIPSO, ERA5, and the CMIP6 models. Significant discrepancies were found, with ERA5 and CMIP6 consistently overestimating sLCC and snowfall frequency. This bias is likely due to cloud microphysics parameterization. This conclusion has implications for accurately representing cloud phase and snowfall in future climate projections.
Guillaume Feger, Jean-Pierre Chaboureau, Thibaut Dauhut, Julien Delanoë, and Pierre Coutris
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-105, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-105, 2025
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The Saharan air at trade wind layer, cold pools, and upper tropospheric dry air are identified as the three main factors inhibiting the cyclogenesis of the Pierre Henri mesoscale convective system. The findings were obtained trough observations made during two flights of the CADDIWA campaign and a convection-permitting simulation run with the Meso-NH model. They provide new insights into the complex dynamics of cyclogenesis in the Cape Verde region and challenge the existing model of the SAL.
Claudia Christine Stephan and Bjorn Stevens
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 1209–1226, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1209-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1209-2025, 2025
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Tropical precipitation cluster area and intensity distributions follow power laws, but the physical processes responsible for this behavior remain unknown. We analyze global simulations that realistically represent precipitation processes. We consider Earth-like planets as well as virtual planets to realize different types of large-scale dynamics. Our finding is that power laws in Earth’s precipitation cluster statistics stem from the robust power laws in Earth’s atmospheric wind field.
Tim Lüttmer, Annette Miltenberger, and Peter Spichtinger
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-185, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-185, 2025
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We investigate ice formation pathways in a warm conveyor belt case study. We employ a multi-phase microphysics scheme that distinguishes between ice from different nucleation processes. Ice crystals in the cirrus outflow mostly stem from in-situ formation. Hence they were formed directly from the vapor phase. Sedimentational redistribution modulates cirrus properties and leads to a disagreement between cirrus origin classifications based on thermodynamic history and nucleation processes.
Seoung Soo Lee, Chang Hoon Jung, Jinho Choi, Young Jun Yoon, Junshik Um, Youtong Zheng, Jianping Guo, Manguttathil G. Manoj, Sang-Keun Song, and Kyung-Ja Ha
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 705–726, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-705-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-705-2025, 2025
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This study attempts to test a general factor that explains differences in the properties of different mixed-phase clouds using a modeling tool. Although this attempt is not to identify a factor that can perfectly explain and represent the properties of different mixed-phase clouds, we believe that this attempt acts as a valuable stepping stone towards a more complete, general way of using climate models to better predict climate change.
Annemarie Lottermoser and Simon Unterstraßer
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3859, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3859, 2025
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Contrail-cirrus significantly contributes to aviation's overall climate impact. As hydrogen combustion and fuel cell use are emerging technologies for aircraft propulsion, we simulated individual contrails from hydrogen propulsion during the first six minutes after exhaust emission, termed the vortex phase. The ice crystal loss during that stage is crucial as the number of ice crystals has a large impact on the further evolution of contrails into contrail-cirrus and their radiative forcing.
Wenjie Zhang, Hong Wang, Xiaoye Zhang, Yue Peng, Zhaodong Liu, Deying Wang, Da Zhang, Chen Han, Yang Zhao, Junting Zhong, Wenxing Jia, Huiqiong Ning, and Huizheng Che
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3677, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3677, 2025
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We implement a real-time subgrid-scale aerosol-cloud interaction (ACI) mechanism in a mesoscale atmospheric chemistry system and find that subgrid-scale ACI can improve meteorological factors predictions. This study demonstrates the importance of real-time subgrid-scale ACI to weather forecast and the necessity of multiscale ACI studies.
Jordan Eissner, David Mechem, Yi Jin, Virendra Ghate, and James Booth
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3438, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3438, 2025
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Low-level clouds have important radiative feedbacks and can occur in a range of meteorological conditions, yet our knowledge and prediction of them are insufficient. We evaluate model forecasts of low-level cloud properties across a cold front and the associated environments that they form in. The model represents the meteorological conditions well and produces broken clouds behind the cold front in areas of strong surface forcing, large stability, and large-scale subsiding motion.
Kevin Wolf, Nicolas Bellouin, Olivier Boucher, Susanne Rohs, and Yun Li
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 157–181, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-157-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-157-2025, 2025
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ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis and airborne in situ observations from IAGOS are compared in terms of the representation of the contrail formation potential and the presence of supersaturation. Differences are traced back to biases in ERA5 relative humidity fields. Those biases are addressed by applying a quantile mapping technique that significantly improved contrail estimation based on post-processed ERA5 data.
Marje Prank, Juha Tonttila, Xiaoxia Shang, Sami Romakkaniemi, and Tomi Raatikainen
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 183–197, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-183-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-183-2025, 2025
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Large primary bioparticles such as pollen can be abundant in the atmosphere. In humid conditions pollen can rupture and release a large number of fine sub-pollen particles (SPPs). The paper investigates what kind of birch pollen concentrations are needed for the pollen and SPPs to start playing a noticeable role in cloud processes and alter precipitation formation. In the studied cases only the largest observed pollen concentrations were able to noticeably alter the precipitation formation.
Luís Filipe Escusa dos Santos, Hannah C. Frostenberg, Alejandro Baró Pérez, Annica M. L. Ekman, Luisa Ickes, and Erik S. Thomson
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 119–142, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-119-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-119-2025, 2025
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The Arctic is experiencing enhanced surface warming. The observed decline in Arctic sea-ice extent is projected to lead to an increase in Arctic shipping activity, which may lead to further climatic feedbacks. Using an atmospheric model and results from marine engine experiments that focused on fuel sulfur content reduction and exhaust wet scrubbing, we investigate how ship exhaust particles influence the properties of Arctic clouds. Implications for radiative surface processes are discussed.
Julie Carles, Nicolas Bellouin, Najda Villefranque, and Jean-Louis Dufresne
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3642, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3642, 2025
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Cirrus and contrails affect Earth’s energy balance with a lot of remaining uncertainty. The balance between solar and terrestrial radiation is delicate to calculate, and factors as cloud optical depth, shape, Sun position are crucial to estimate the effect of those clouds on radiation. Also, often neglected three dimensional paths of radiation, or 3D effects, may be important to account for at climatic scale.
Nadja Omanovic, Brigitta Goger, and Ulrike Lohmann
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 14145–14175, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-14145-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-14145-2024, 2024
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We evaluated the numerical weather model ICON in two horizontal resolutions with two bulk microphysics schemes over hilly and complex terrain in Switzerland and Austria, respectively. We focused on the model's ability to simulate mid-level clouds in summer and winter. By combining observational data from two different field campaigns, we show that an increase in the horizontal resolution and a more advanced cloud microphysics scheme is strongly beneficial for cloud representation.
Cornelis Schwenk and Annette Miltenberger
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 14073–14099, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-14073-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-14073-2024, 2024
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Warm conveyor belts (WCBs) transport moisture into the upper atmosphere, where it acts as a greenhouse gas. This transport is not well understood, and the role of rapidly rising air is unclear. We simulate a WCB and look at fast- and slow-rising air to see how moisture is (differently) transported. We find that for fast-ascending air more ice particles reach higher into the atmosphere and that frozen cloud particles are removed differently than during slow ascent, which has more water vapour.
Fabian Hoffmann, Yao-Sheng Chen, and Graham Feingold
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3893, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3893, 2024
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Clouds reflect a substantial portion of the incoming solar radiation back into space. This capacity is determined by the number of cloud droplets, which in turn is influenced by the number of aerosol particles, forming the basis for aerosol-cloud-climate interactions. In this study, we use a simple mixed-layer approach to understand the effect of aerosol on cloud water in non-precipitating stratocumulus.
Pratapaditya Ghosh, Ian Boutle, Paul Field, Adrian Hill, Anthony Jones, Marie Mazoyer, Katherine J. Evans, Salil Mahajan, Hyun-Gyu Kang, Min Xu, Wei Zhang, Noah Asch, and Hamish Gordon
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3376, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3376, 2024
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We study aerosol-fog interactions near Paris using a weather and climate model with high spatial resolution. We show that our model can simulate fog lifecycle effectively. We find that the fog droplet number concentrations, the amount of liquid water in the fog, and the vertical structure of the fog are highly sensitive to the parameterization that simulates droplet formation and growth. The changes we propose could improve fog forecasts significantly without increasing computational costs.
Pratapaditya Ghosh, Ian Boutle, Paul Field, Adrian Hill, Marie Mazoyer, Katherine J. Evans, Salil Mahajan, Hyun-Gyu Kang, Min Xu, Wei Zhang, and Hamish Gordon
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3397, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3397, 2024
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We study the lifecycle of fog events in Europe using a weather and climate model. By incorporating droplet formation and growth driven by radiative cooling, our model better simulates the total liquid water in foggy atmospheric columns. We show that both adiabatic and radiative cooling play significant, often equally important roles in driving droplet formation and growth. We discuss strategies to address droplet number overpredictions, by improving model physics and addressing model artifacts.
Jing Yang, Jiaojiao Li, Meilian Chen, Xiaoqin Jing, Yan Yin, Bart Geerts, Zhien Wang, Yubao Liu, Baojun Chen, Shaofeng Hua, Hao Hu, Xiaobo Dong, Ping Tian, Qian Chen, and Yang Gao
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 13833–13848, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13833-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13833-2024, 2024
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Detecting unambiguous signatures is vital for examining cloud-seeding impacts, but often, seeding signatures are immersed in natural variability. In this study, reflectivity changes induced by glaciogenic seeding using different AgI concentrations are investigated under various conditions, and a method is developed to estimate the AgI concentration needed to detect unambiguous seeding signatures. The results aid in operational seeding-based decision-making regarding the amount of AgI dispersed.
Florian Sauerland, Niels Souverijns, Anna Possner, Heike Wex, Preben Van Overmeiren, Alexander Mangold, Kwinten Van Weverberg, and Nicole van Lipzig
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 13751–13768, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13751-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13751-2024, 2024
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We use a regional climate model, COSMO-CLM², enhanced with a module resolving aerosol processes, to study Antarctic clouds. We prescribe different concentrations of ice-nucleating particles to our model to assess how these clouds respond to concentration changes, validating results with cloud and aerosol observations from the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica station. Our results show that aerosol–cloud interactions vary with temperature, providing valuable insights into Antarctic cloud dynamics.
Yi Li, Xiaoli Liu, and Hengjia Cai
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 13525–13540, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13525-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13525-2024, 2024
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The influence of different aerosol modes on cloud processes remains controversial. We modified the aerosol spectra and concentrations to simulate a warm stratiform cloud process in Jiangxi, China, using the WRF-SBM scheme. Research shows that different aerosol spectra have diverse effects on cloud droplet spectra, cloud development, and the correlation between dispersion (ε) and cloud physics quantities. Compared to cloud droplet concentration, ε is more sensitive to the volume radius.
Fabian Hoffmann, Franziska Glassmeier, and Graham Feingold
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 13403–13412, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13403-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13403-2024, 2024
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Clouds constitute a major cooling influence on Earth's climate system by reflecting a large fraction of the incident solar radiation back to space. This ability is controlled by the number of cloud droplets, which is governed by the number of aerosol particles in the atmosphere, laying the foundation for so-called aerosol–cloud–climate interactions. In this study, a simple model to understand the effect of aerosol on cloud water is developed and applied.
Andrea Mosso, Thomas Hocking, and Thorsten Mauritsen
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 12793–12806, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-12793-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-12793-2024, 2024
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Clouds play a crucial role in the Earth's energy balance, as they can either warm up or cool down the area they cover depending on their height and depth. They are expected to alter their behaviour under climate change, affecting the warming generated by greenhouse gases. This paper proposes a new method to estimate their overall effect on this warming by simulating a climate where clouds are transparent. Results show that with the model used, clouds have a stabilising effect on climate.
Tao Shi, Yuanjian Yang, Ping Qi, and Simone Lolli
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 12807–12822, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-12807-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-12807-2024, 2024
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This paper explored the formation mechanisms of the amplified canopy urban heat island intensity (ΔCUHII) during heat wave (HW) periods in the megacity of Beijing from the perspectives of mountain–valley breeze and urban morphology. During the mountain breeze phase, high-rise buildings with lower sky view factors (SVFs) had a pronounced effect on the ΔCUHII. During the valley breeze phase, high-rise buildings exerted a dual influence on the ΔCUHII.
Yao-Sheng Chen, Jianhao Zhang, Fabian Hoffmann, Takanobu Yamaguchi, Franziska Glassmeier, Xiaoli Zhou, and Graham Feingold
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 12661–12685, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-12661-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-12661-2024, 2024
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Marine stratocumulus cloud is a type of shallow cloud that covers the vast areas of Earth's surface. It plays an important role in Earth's energy balance by reflecting solar radiation back to space. We used numerical models to simulate a large number of marine stratocumuli with different characteristics. We found that how the clouds develop throughout the day is affected by the level of humidity in the air above the clouds and how closely the clouds connect to the ocean surface.
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Short summary
Aerosols affect cloud properties, and the radiative effects of clouds. Human emissions of aerosol particles and precursors may alter the radiative effects of clouds. This is generally a cooling effect that offsets other warming effects of human emissions of gases. Simulating these aerosol effects on clouds are highly dependent on the formulation of the microphysical (cloud droplet scale) processes. This work uses model simulations to show these effects are large, and depend on certain processes.
Aerosols affect cloud properties, and the radiative effects of clouds. Human emissions of...
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